


Only If For A Night

by mintpearlvoice



Category: The Wicked and the Divine
Genre: Dreams, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 14:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3613878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Caught up in apocalyptic visions, Laura is dragged out of her personal hell by the devil herself. Coda to Issue 9.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only If For A Night

This is like when Luci died, only worse. She's too weak to wipe her eyes, to blow her nose, just keeps sobbing and trembling on the couch, feeling cold as a corpse. Like everything worth wishing for has gone out of the world. Even after her mom covers her with three blankets and her dad brings her passionflower tea (her favorite) and chocolate chip pancakes (also her favorite) she can't bring herself to care. Her heartbeat goes like, it's ending, it's ending, and she doesn't know what's ending except that she can't let it end. "Get some sleep, baby. We'll take you to the emergency room if you're not any better, all right? And if anyone tries to make you sign an autograph while you're in the hospital, I'll call up all my law school chums and they'll wish they'd never been born." She nods, though her eyes are still leaking. The light flicks off. They needn't have done that. Existence is dark enough already. In great shuddering sobs she loses the fight with sleep. Nothing to live for except that dying hurts more. Damp sand between her toes as she crouches in a cave, poking out at a guttering fire. It's dying and so is she, and if it goes out so will everything. what's left to burn? She heaps all of London on the flames to try to keep warm. The Tate Modern sizzles all the colors of paint. The library warms her hands for mere seconds. She is shaking violently, teeth chattering, sobbing gasping as she carefully heaps Shakespeare on the flames, eyes blurry with tears. The West End crackles like pine cones, like drumbeats. The Internet is a burst of warmth. Is survival worth it? Is anything worth it? Music goes last, everything from classical to the Beatles and Ellie Goulding. She is burning cold, rip-off-your-clothes and curl-up-to-die hypothermic. Her heart is steaming smoking like dry ice and things in the darkness tear into her body as the fire begins to flicker and die- And then it flares up. So bright she has to writhe away and cover her eyes with chafed chapped hands. At last she dares to peek out through her fingers- There is a figure walking from the flames, so bright it hurts to look at them. Laura closes her eyes again. Click- Hands on her fur-rag-clad body, long-fingered deft and warm as sex. They slide to the bare places on her thighs, sending a jolt of warmth to her breasts- to her heart. "So this is your Hell, is it, Laura? That razor suicide edge between survival and what makes life worth living." It doesn't matter what the woman is saying, because she's pulling Laura close, and those hands are moving along her body, rubbing her, warming her up. The howling of the beasts is already starting to die away, and she can't feel the guttering fire, or hear the cave. "Mine has always been what comes after. But that's the difference between you and me, isn't it? You've still got the chance to fight. I'm just the bitch who refuses to die." Her breath is hot on Laura's cheek. She smells like absinthe and vetiver and the heady sweetness of an orchard fermenting on the tree. And when she presses her lips to Laura's cheek, her kiss is an uncurling tendril of fire. "Open your eyes." They're surrounded by pooling red velvet. Laura can't tell where the walls end and the floor begins. She's wearing a parody of her Amaterasu costume, a white strapless bikini top over breasts aching to be properly touched and some strategically draped see-through fabric around her hips. The Devil is stylish as always, like a parody of a Victoria's Secret model in an owl-feather cloak (or is that wings?) and careless white lace, and Laura has never felt so relieved to see a pair of nipples in her entire life. "I know it's all gone balls up.But you can't give into the Nothing. You're going to need to be strong and daring and wicked and brave. I think you can do that." She slouches against the probably-wall and drapes her feathered cloak around Laura's shoulders. "Fear nothing, love yourself most, do the opposite of what all the rules say, and humanity might just come out of this wiser than it stumbled in." "Are you quoting Labyrinth?" "They're quoting me. Same as Milton- and the poor boy was so dreadfully inaccurate. All those apostrophes." She waves her hand with a look of vague disdain, and there's something so idiosyncratic about the whole thing that Laura can't help letting a laugh bubble up in her. "There's my girl," Lucifer breathes. She tugs Laura closer with a shift of her cloak/wings, lays a kiss like a brand along her collarbones, cups her face and pulls her in- Their kiss is the invention of pleasure itself, and Laura comes so hard she wakes herself up.

She's riding out the last of it, grinding against her fingers, moaning incoherently when-

 

"Good morning to you, too," Inanna chirps. "Baal posted a naked selfie last night and you neither liked nor retweeted, so I figured something was seriously wrong. How're you feeling? I made tea." She pushes her hair back with her clean hand; when she scratches absently at her collarbone, her hand comes away with vivid beige lipstick under the nails. "Better," she says, and takes the offered mug. Maybe it's just their imagination, Inanna thinks, but for a moment Laura's hazel-blue eyes seem to flash red.


End file.
